JerryvonKramer

goc are these the Luce tapes from Chicago?

This needs a bit more refinement MoS. As in when are you talking about. WCW didn't exist until 1988 and JCP doesn't become central to the NWA until about 1986. The style changes in the WWF from 1980 to the mid-80s to the early-mid 90s to the Attitude era and beyond The style changes in WCW too especially after 94 when Hogan comes in, and during the Monday Night War they arguably didn't really have a style as such because it was home to so many different styles, the light heavyweights, the younger more technical up and comers, Hogan and cronies, Flair and the Horsemen, there are so many different things going on. So for a real answer to this, we need a date I reckon. WWF before 1984 Historically (as in going back to 70s) "WWF style" is lots of big men, more emphasis on punches and kicks than on throws or holds. It's sort of a brawling Gorilla style, as epitomised by Bruno or Dominic Denucci, or on the heel side guys like Ivan Koloff who were big and who could brawl too, but also who could bump for the faces -- Ken Patera or Spiros Arion also fit that mould. Guys in that 270+ weight bracket who can still work. Backlund's "dominant Scrappy Doo" style is a bit of an anomaly, because no one else really works like that. Vince Sr's booking pattern is well known. This is a heel coming into the territory: Pre-run activity: - Introduced to territory by Blassie / Wizard/ Albano -- heel gets initial heel - One or two TV squashes - One or two MSG wins against Denucci / Strongbow / whomever to establish heel as threat. Match 1: Draw or screwy finish with heel winning -- countout or blood stoppage -- heel gets his heat (also transferred to manager) Match 2: Draw, revenge match for face where he gets his heat back, often this match is a bit longer Match 3: Blow off, face champ wins strong, often over in less than 10 minutes. In general, this WWF style was geared towards brawls. The New York crowd wanted a certain degree of action and violence. This is in sharp contrast to the mat-based style of a Dory Funk Jr. or the suplex-heavy style of a Harley Race. Although Backlund during his run was a strange hybrid of all of them. Some features of matches from that era: - Face champ could be dominant and guzzle up the heel, especially in the blow offs - However, if the champ is Bruno or Pedro, then the "big comeback" is hard-wired into the structure of the match. Pedro would sell a lot and then make his big comeback, Bruno usually has a moment when he fires up and starts kicking ass. - Backlund matches don't follow the above. --------- WWF after 1984 till the early 90s Then after 84, "the Hogan match" sets the template for about a decade. Not just Hogan had that match but pretty much everyone had it. "The Hogan match" has two forms. Form 1 vs. Monster Form 2 vs. "Technical" heel Some features of "The Hogan match": - Pretty much ALWAYS follows the shine - heat - comeback - finish formula, with a real focus on the "big comeback" of the face. While this does look back to Pedro and Bruno, I think the Hogan variant has a lot more set pieces. Doesn't matter if it's Hogan or JYD or Duggan or any babyface, the match will more or less always follow the structure of the face clearing house to start, the heel doing something cheap to gain advantage before running through his offense, and then the face doing his trademark pose (e.g. Hogan's hulk-up and shaking of the head) to pop the crowd and make the comeback. - Technical heels ALWAYS have to cheat to gain advantage or win. You'll seldom see a non-Monster heel in WWF win without some cheapness (foreign object or manager interference, foot on the ropes, ref bump, something) between 1984 and 1994. - The finish most of the time will be a finisher on PPV, although Vince did still use his dad's formula for years at the house shows. - If it's a blow off, babyface usually goes over in the end - The heel tends to carry the offensive portion of the match - The babyface is usually overcoming odds of some description - Win or loss, the babyface will usually get their heat back somehow. Picture Duggan with a 2x4 shouting "HO!" - Main event matches are about 20 minutes. ------- Mid-late 90s WWF Chad or Charles will have to come in to talk mid-90s, it's been too long for me. I think in general when Bret was champ the rest of the promotion was still wedded to "the Hogan match", but Bret was doing a kind of Bob Backlund tribute act -- although the more Jack Brisco I watch, the more I see Bret in Brisco. I think Bret changes the mould a bit in the main event. Someone else can talk to Shawn and beyond. ------- WCW circa 1988-9 Re: WCW - since WCW was a direct successor to Crockett, its style in the 80s and early 90s is defined by Flair and the Horsemen. Some features of the style circa 1989: - Main event matches can be between 20 minutes and 45 minutes. Typically longer than WWF matches. - Working a body part. Classic Andersons psychology of picking a limb and destroying it. You'll see a lot of matches built around that concept. - Babyfaces are mostly stupid, see Sting. - Babyfaces are mostly victims of heinous heel beatdowns which injure them, see Dusty. - Babyfaces can work, see Steamboat - Action and motion. Whether it's Flair, Tully, Arn or Windham in the match, the JCP/early WCW style was a lot of action and motion, they keep things moving. Even if Arn is going after a body part, you don't see him sitting in a hold for 12 minutes, he keeps it moving. This isn't "go go go", but I think you'll generally see more MOVEMENT all over the ring in a typical WCW match than in a typical WWF match. - Heels can go over, even in blow offs. - Heels can sometimes win clean. - Less wedded to the shine-heat-comeback-blow off formula. You'll see more match structures in general. Luger vs. Flair at Starrcade 88 comes to mind: babyface dominates for a decent portion of the match, heel manages to take advantage by focusing on a limb, then destroys limb for the win. You'd never ever ever get that narrative on a WWF PPV in 1988. - Babyfaces have more "control segments" in general outside of the shine, consequence of more time. Those are the main ones I can think of.

Well the thing is that I just run into things that I had no idea that people elsewhere didn't know: braces, "hard", dungarees, open days ... how am I meant to know that you don't know what those things are? Learn how to speak English damn you all! As per last time, here are mine and Steven's ratings on this batch recorded for posterity.

Has anyone mentioned Uncle Elmer / Stan Frazier yet?

http://placetobenation.com/all-japan-excite-series-2/ Are you excited? Parv and Steven watch four more exciting matches from 90s All Japan Pro Wrestling! 10/19/90 Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masa Fuchi 01/15/91 Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue 04/20/91 Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada & Kenta Kobashi vs Jumbo Tsuruta, Akira Taue & Masa Fuchi 09/04/91 Stan Hansen vs Kenta Kobashi The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, youll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.

Honky Tonk Man vs. Mr. X (11/16/86) Let's see this then! Honky is booed like hell out of the gate, Monsoon and Johnny V compare HTM to Brutus Beefcake. Monsoon wonders how Mr X would get through passport control with "Parts Unknown", Johnny V no sells it and admits that he takes no interest in the career of Mr X. Headscissors by Mr X. European uppercut. Crowd is very loudly booing HTM and some cheers for Mr X. Snapmare by Honky. Chinlock. Monsoon and Johnny V aren't getting on here. Little double stomp by Mr X. Commentators can't believe he's getting cheered. HTM comes back with an elbow to the gut. Hits a fistdrop from the top, shades of Jerry Lawler. Chokes by Mr X now. Misses a flying crossbody. Swinging neckbreaker gets three for HTM. Pretty rubbish match. * For some reason this crowd noise didn't sound real to me -- there's quite a disparity too between what we can hear and what we can see of the actual fans who look like they are sitting on their hands. If this is a career highlight for Honky, he is definitely a contender for worst of all time.

Advance apologies for some of the coughing you might hear from me during this show. I was hitting "mute" on my skype, but seemingly the recorder doesn't recognise it and it picked up my coughing. I was in a bad way during that weekend!

http://placetobenation.com/where-the-big-boys-play-67-halloween-havoc-1991/ Chad and Parv review Halloween Havoc 91. - [8:00] Wrestling Observer and PW Torch roundup: Flair stripped of the NWA title, turmoil for Tom Zenk, and mystery angles. - [51:50] Review of Halloween Havoc 91: Chamber of Horrors, PN News horror, Bobby Eaton and his pumpkin, and the Halloween Phantom. - [2:15:15] End of show awards AND be sure to check out Matt Ds great companion piece at PTBN: http://placetobenation.com/wtbbp-the-column-beyond-the-great-match-robbery-of-1991/ The PWO-PTBN Podcast Network features great shows you can find right here at Place to Be Nation. By subscribing on iTunes or SoundCloud, you’ll have access to new episodes, bonus content, as well as a complete archive of: Where the Big Boys Play, Titans of Wrestling, Pro-Wrestling Super-Show, Good Will Wrestling, and Wrestling With the Past.

This was probably my favourite piece yet and I laughed out loud at the idea of Hayes using his powers for evil.

There will be no such granular attention to detail.

Correct.

The Flair interview on the last Steve Austin show is very revealing about this. And he talks about Johnny Valentine specficially. He reckons that Valentine wouldn't do any rope running or take an Irish whip into the turnbuckle. Says that Valentine would mainly work the mat, but does admit taking the Flair flop from him. He puts over Ray Stevens as being the real innovator of his big bumping style, as well as Bock, but also credits Harley Race with the turnbuckle slam, Jack Brisco with the figure-four, and Terry Funk for his reverse knife edge. There's an interesting little moment when he mentions that he wasn't really a fan of Dory Funk Jr because he worked that same semi-shoot-mat style as Valentine, and clearly Flair favours a lot of motion and action. Really terrific opening ten minutes of that interview, and it seems to confirm a lot of the stuff I was talking about in this thread.

What difference has a month made? 1. Ric Flair - 178 replies (Last month: 1) 2. Shawn Michaels - 111 replies (NEW ENTRY!) 3. Daniel Bryan - 88 replies (Last month: 2) 4. John Cena - 81 replies (NEW ENTRY!) 5. El Satanico - 60 replies (NEW ENTRY!) 6. Stan Hansen - 57 replies (Last month: 8) 7. Hiroshi Tanahashi - 55 replies (NEW ENTRY!) 8. Mitsuharu Misawa - 53 replies (Last month: 4) 9. Kurt Angle - 48 replies (Last month: 10) Joint 10. Vader - 47 replies (NEW ENTRY!) Joint 10. Bam Bam Bigelow - 47 replies (Last month: 3)

Question: do people prefer Shawn as a face or as a heel? And why?

I don't think tag wrestling was so much "pioneered" in the 1980s as it was perfected.

Always amusing when the Americans think we're the ones with the accents.

I don't disagree. I do think there is *more* footage out there a lot of the time than people might think, even if there aren't always full matches. I actually feel like I've somehow got better at watching 8mm silent footage. I was pretty into that Terry Funk vs Jack Brisco match. There was also some very interesting looking Bill Watts and Fred Blassie stuff uploaded recently.

I'm the same, I just don't care at all about it. I've never really liked it when the details of biography colour how people look at things either. For example, sometimes you see students get really into the narrative around Sylvia Plath's suicide and really *that's* what they want to talk about and are interested in, not the work. See also, Kurt Combain, Van Gough, DFW, Virginia Woolf, anyone called von Erich. Are you into the person or into the work? There's a hard separation for me.

I nominated him originally and 90% of it is for his bullying of Chiefjay Strongbow in that Georgia footage. The other 10% is for his double legdrop. In terms of character work, Ladd was ahead of his time, no doubt. He's an 80s or even 90s heel in a 70s environment, and you'd have to say he was a trailblazer because of it. There are 70s Ladd matches from WWF on tape, we might have even looked at one or two of them for Titans, but that'd be the place to look for longer main event matches. He faces Bruno numerous times and Backlund in 78. As far as I know, those are on tape. He went on a few Japan tours, but it would take an expert to tell you what is out there from those runs. I haven't seen him crop up when I've been looking for Dory stuff. The trouble we have is that when Ladd wasn't in New York or Japan, he tended to work Georgie or the old Leroy McGuirk territory. Obviously from GCW, we have none of the Omni shows, and I don't know of any pre-Watts MidSouth footage (is there any AT ALL?)

I am going to be a "bit controversial" here. To what extent do you think Reed flatters to deceive? His peak is relatively short. And yes, on his day he looks incredible, especially in some of that Mid-South stuff Will pointed out. But there are also some average Reed matches from that time period. He could really sit in a chinlock when he wanted to. I'm just not sure he has the volume of goods you'd demand from some other people. Is a guy like Reed getting an easy ride because he was something of a "revelation" for DVDR 80s set watchers? Whereas a guy like Shawn Michaels or ... well, let's say, Randy Orton has a higher bar to get over. Just a thought. Reed is touch and go for my list. He'd currently be in the 80-100 region but is the sort of guy who might drop off depending on how many World of Sport / Lucha / 00s indie / modern WWE guys end up taking up space.

So much for being discreet, lol

Here is the aforementioned podcast on WoS: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/27869-titans-xtra/?p=5636450

https://soundcloud.com/jerryvonkramer/titans-xtra-world-of-sport Parv and Kelly welcome Steven Graham (Pro Wrestling Super Show) to take a look at some matches from Britain in the 1970s, as shown on World of Sport. Mick McManus vs. Kung-Fu Jim Breaks vs. Adrian Street The Royals vs. The Saints

I prefer them to the Rock n Rolls, hands up who else is feeling brave enough to admit that.